> Tips and Tricks

Animation Tip: Printable Template for 4:3 Frame Drawings
Print off this template for use in drawing your frame-by-frame animations, for convenient 4:3 image framing.

10 Essential Art Supplies for the Traditional Animator
If you're less of a digital animator and lean more towards the traditional, you've probably got a studio as cluttered as mine--and there are some supplies that you just can't live without.

Animation Planning Tip: Storyboarding
Using a storyboard will help you organize your animation, and match you mental visualizations of scenes with the written script.

Animation Tip: Tools of the Trade: Light Tables
Whether you're drawing 2D animation for cel painting or doing the preliminary pencil work to be scanned in for a computer animation, a light table is one of the most important tools for frame-by-frame animation that you'll ever own.

Keeping Up With the Studios: Breaking into Computer Animation Without Breaking the Bank
Computer animation can be be fun, but it can also be quite costly. If you know where to look and how to shop, it's not that hard to compete with the big boys without spending the big bucks.

How to be Seen: What it Takes to Get Your Animation on Television
It seems a farfetched dream, doesn't it: the idea of something that you worked on being played on broadcast television for all the world to see. If you're an individual or a small company, it's not that easy.

Optimizing Video Files for the Web: Codecs
When saving your 2D or 3D animations into video format, don't forget to check your video compression settings and remember that not everyone has the same codec sets as you do.

Cutting Your Test Render Time
Are you tired of waiting hours just to view a test of your animated motion, only to tweak it and render it again over and over again? There's an wasy way to avoid that.

Saving Your Files While Still Saving Computer Space
Anyone who's ever worked in computer animation can tell you that you're going to use a lot of system resources. The programs alone will eat up your hard drive and CPU resources, and your working files can be anywhere from 15 Kb to 150 MB. But there are ways to save your hard drive without purging your files, and they're not as complicated as you might think.

Avoiding the System Resource Bog
We've all experienced slowdowns and lockups while working on our computers. This can be a real pain when you're animating, so let's look at ways to clear up your system resources.

Flash MX Keyboard Shortcuts
When working in Flash, one thing that can save a lot of time is knowledge of the various keyboard shortcuts.

Flash Tip: Alternate Website for Non-Flash Users
While designing a website in Flash, it's easy to assume that your viewers will not have some version of the Macromedia Flash player. However, you may find that a large percentage of your users either have an older version of the Flash player or none at all. For these users, it's helpful to have a non-Flash version of your website available.

Flash Tip: Maximizing Workspace in Flash MX
Working in Flash MX can get pretty crowded, but there are ways to maximize your stage's work area. The easiest way to do this is to use your keyboard shortcuts to remove panels when you don't need them.

Flash Tip: Exporting a Preview
With a work-in-progress, it's always good to be able to stop and check how the overall project is coming along--especially in Flash.

Flash Tip: Enabling Simple Buttons
Enabling simple buttons in Flash lets you view how your buttons work without having to render/preview a movie.

Flash Tip: Onion-Skinning Animation
Frame-by-frame animation can be difficult when you're working on one frame at a time with no reference for the previous or next frames. Flash has a solution for this dilemma--known as onion-skinning, an option that you can turn on that shows a range of frames both before and after your current frame.

Flash Tip: The Trace Bitmap Function
In case you missed when it was covered in Lesson 5, here's a quick tip on how to use the trace bitmap function in Flash to turn bitmap art into vector images.

Flash Tip: Motion Tweening Expanded: Rotation
In the first Flash lesson, we covered motion tweening as a basic "Point A to Point B" process but you can also use motion tweens to rotate your symbols.

Flash Tip: Tools of the Trade: Drawing in Flash With a Graphics Tablet
Save yourself some time and effort in your frame-by-frame vector animation with this high-tech--but inexpensive--plug and play tool.